"Anthony W" wrote in message
...
Dan wrote:
An unexpectedly fast burning fuse can toast one's fingers while
testing. If you want to see a test of relative burn rates between
smokeless and black powders burn a spoonful of each. Use a blowtorch to
ignite the black powder. It will burn fast enough to extinguish the
torch.

It was also a commentary on some of the other clever moves I have seen
and done. I have a series of photographs of one fool using his buttocks
to launch an oversize bottle rocket. The last picture shows a significant
amount of charring.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

I for most of my home spun fireworks, I didn't roll the fuse in black
powder only soaked them in a 50/50 black power/water solution then hung
them up up to dry. This made for some very slow fuses. I put a 24" fuse
on one of my first homemade devices and I waited several minutes for it to
go off. Watching it through binoculars was like watching paint dry until
the end. ;o)

For the rocket motors, I had to roll the motor end in black powder before
drying to get reliable ignition. I only rolled one test fuse for the full
length. It was too damn fast for my tastes. I like to be able to get
back aways before things go boom. I guess I'm just enough fearful to keep
from blowing my self up...

If I ever play with model rockets again, I'll use the electric igniters
that come with the engines. There was a certain level of simplicity using
a welding rod and fuse to do the launch when I was a kid...

Tony

We had a rocketry club in my high school, of which I was a member. As it
happened, none of us had a clue about the structural materials involved,
including our faculty advisor; but a couple of the members did at least know
the names of the chemicals needed for reasonalby high performance
propellants.

In those innocent days, you could still buy just about anything you knew the
name of, so each of our attempts was sufficiently grandiose to fully
compensate for the abject failures which preceeded it. Fortunately, we were
sufficiently safety coscious to stay well back from the intended launch site
and behind a small berm.

Of course, when ever more grandiose attempts don't quite succeed, there can
be ever more grandiose failures--the last of which destroyed our ignition
and launching equipment. That's probably just as well, since we made made
our last rocket of steel which we believed would sufficiently robust....

Clearly, a little more knowledge and/or advice would have given at least as
much entertainment from the successfull launch of cardboard rockets that
would not have attempted to duplicate those clever hypersonic nozzels that
we copied from the space program.


Peter